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Tuesday, 3 June 2014

Insurers have exposed a record £1.3bn
worth of fraudulent claims last year as the industry stepped up its war on
cheats.

The amount,
released by the Association of British Insurers (ABI), marks an 18% rise in
value on 2012 and equates to £3.5m worth of insurance frauds being uncovered every day.

The ABI said
there had also been a "significant" increase in people phoning up to
report suspected fraudsters, indicating a growing acknowledgement that this was
not a "victimless" crime.

In 2013,
118,500 bogus or exaggerated insurance claims were detected – more than 2,000 a
week.

Fraudulent
motor insurance claims were the most expensive and common to be exposed, with
59,900 dishonest claims worth £811m detected last year.

While there
was a small fall in the number of detected frauds, their value had increased.
The average fraud detected across all types of insurance products was worth
£10,813.

The ABI said
various industry initiatives were helping to "turn the screw on
cheats". The Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) was created in 2006 by the
industry to tackle organised cross-industry insurance scams.

The IFB is
supporting police forces and insurers across the UK to investigate 110
"crash for cash" scams where motor accidents were deliberately
staged, which on their own represent approximately £120m of financial exposure
to insurers.

Investigations
by the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, an ABI-funded dedicated
specialist unit of the City of London police, have so far led to 470 arrests
and 85 prosecutions since it was set up in 2011.

The ABI also
said calls from members of the public reporting suspected insurance frauds into
the IFB's "cheatline" rose by 32% to 6,060 in 2013 compared with the
previous year.

A spokesman
for the ABI said there appeared to be a "growing acknowledgement that
(insurance fraud) is not a victimless crime, it's affecting people in their
pocket".

He also
pointed out that staged car accidents carried a safety risk to innocent members
of the public. Sometimes, fraudsters would deliberately slam their brakes on so
that an innocent motorist would hit them from behind, or they would flash their
headlights to pretend that they were going to let a driver out of a junction
and then deliberately hit them.

The rise in
the average value of insurance scams could be seen as a reflection of the
high-end nature of frauds by organised gangs that were increasingly being
uncovered, the ABI said.

Since 2007
the value of dishonest general insurance claims being uncovered has more than
doubled, with the number detected increasing by 30% during the same period.

Fraud is
estimated to add up to £90 to the cost of everyone's general insurance
policies.

Aidan Kerr,
the ABI's assistant director, head of fraud, said: "The message is clear:
never has it been harder to get away with committing insurance fraud; never
have the penalties – ranging from a custodial sentence and a criminal record to
difficulties in obtaining financial products in the future – been so
severe."

The ABI said
some recent examples of cheats being exposed included:

• Sixty
people, including seven members of the same family, being convicted of a
crash-for-cash staged accident fraud which involved more than £514,000 being
claimed from 25 vehicle crashes alone

• A
professional golfer who claimed £8,000 on his income protection policy for a
knee injury that he said left him unable to work, but was caught on camera
giving golf lessons. He was ordered to do 140 hours unpaid community work

• A woman
was jailed for 22 months following a series of invented street robberies for
items including laptops and designer clothes

• A vet was
jailed for two years for inventing veterinary claims totalling nearly £200,000
for treating non-existent pets.

One insurer,
AA Insurance, said that it identifies more than 100 attempts at fraud every
week.

Simon
Douglas, director of AA Insurance said: "These figures are encouraging
because they reflect the growing success of the insurance industry in the war against
fraud, rather than more fraud taking place."

He said:
"This should send a strong signal to anyone thinking of trying it on.

"While
you might not end up in prison, if an insurer finds that you have attempted to
falsify a claim you'll find it difficult to obtain insurance cover in the
future. Insurers don't like dishonest customers."